President Muhammadu Buhari has come under severe criticism in recent time concerning his speeches. It could be recalled that last month, President Buhari was accused of plagiarizing President Obama speech while launching the “Change Begins with me campaign”. Consequent upon that, the Presidency sanctioned a deputy director in the State House f or allegedly inserting the plagiarized paragraphs in Buhari’s speech.
Mr. President’s 56th Independence Day Anniversary Broadcast has also come under criticism; on the grounds of inaccuracies and lies. First, it was Reno Omokiri who drew the nation’s attention to areas of inaccuracies contained in the speech. Omokiri, on his Facebook page wrote: “An Analysis of President Muhammadu Buhari’s Lies in the 56th Independence Day Anniversary Broadcast”.
“These are the preliminary list of lies from President Buhari’s 2016 Independence Day Speech. More may be exposed as I detect them. President Buhari lied when he said only ₦400 million was voted for housing in 2014. A total of ₦12,888,821,003 was allocated. Even the salary of the staff of the housing ministry is above ₦400 million. President Buhari should be above lying.”
Going further, Omokiri submitted: “President Buhari lied when he said Nigeria was ‘a pariah’ under GEJ. Then British Prime Minister, David Cameron and incumbent German Chancellor, Angela Merkel do not visit pariah countries. They and many others visited Nigeria under Jonathan.”
Also, writing on the veracity of facts in the President’s speech, the Cable, an online medium asserted that indeed, President Buhari’s speech contained half-truths and lies.
“The Cable can confirm that Buhari avoided the truth. In Buhari’s first year in office, foreign investment sank to a nine-year low. According to Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, portfolio investment (FPI) has crashed by 85.5 percent in the past year.” The Cable reported.
The Cable also revealed that: “Oil prices show that the Jonathan administration could have saved more, but to say nothing was saved is totally false. Jonathan left excess crude account at $2.07 billion in May 2015. Foreign reserves also stood at over $29 billion in May 2015.”
In the same vein, President Buhari while commenting on the development in the rail way sector of Nigeria’s economy in the same speech submitted: “Meanwhile, General Electric is investing two point two billion USD in a concession to revamp, provide rolling stock, and manage the existing lines, including the Port Harcourt-Maiduguri Line. The Lagos-Calabar railway will also be on stream soon”.
However, the management of General Electric have come out to discredit the claim by President Buhari . Chief Executive of Electric, Mr. Jay Ireland, was quoted as saying that what they are investing in Nigeria is around $15million. It is saddening that a speech of such an occasion could be filled with so much inaccuracies, it clearly reveals the degree of mediocrity that exists within the President’s team. Mediocrity is a result you get when a leader prioritizes ethnicity over meritocracy in appointing people into public offices; this is the case with President Buhari and his team.
The national broadcast did not only contain many lies but was also full of many empty promises; sadly some of the promises are mere repetitions of his last year’s Independence Day Speech. For example during last year’s independence speech the President echoed: “Those of our refineries which can be serviced and brought back into partial production would be enabled to resume operations so that the whole sordid business of exporting crude and importing finished products in dubious transactions could be stopped.”
In this year’s speech, the President made the same promise on the refineries: “We are to repair our four refineries so that Nigeria can produce most of our petrol requirements locally, pending the coming on stream of new refineries. That way we will save ten billion USD yearly in importing”.
It is disappointing that after one year, this administration is still glorying in vain rhetorics. It clearly shows that the President does not even evaluate past promises it has made to citizens of the nation. The ideal thing, the President should have done having failed to deliver on an electoral promise was to state the reasons for his inability to deliver on such a promise and then recommit himself to delivering on the promise, instead of repeating the same promise; we should not be surprised that come next year, President Buhari would make the same promise
.
On issues of security, the President sounded contradictory and self-confusing; the President declared that Boko Haram has been defeated since December last year, at the same time echoing that the same defeated Boko Haram has been bombing soft targets and killing innocent men and women . A cursory look at the President’s speech reveals that the President merely rehash what he said last year during his October 1, broadcast.
“…That they are resorting to shameless attacks on soft targets such as I.D.P. camps is indicative of their cowardice and desperation. I have instructed security and local authorities to tighten vigilance in vulnerable places.”
In 2016, he however reechoed almost the same thing: “On Security, we have made progress. Boko Haram was defeated by last December – only resorting to cowardly attacks on soft targets, killing innocent men, women and children”. How can you say you have defeated Boko Haram and still say the same group is bombing soft targets and killing innocent men and women.
Again, the President saying his administration has defeated Boko Haram is contradictory, it could be recalled that President Buhari in his inaugural address on May 29, 2015, stated that the fight against Boko Haram cannot be complete until the missing Chibok Girls are rescued. Regrettably, the President in his two Independence Day Anniversary Broadcasts never mentioned about the rescue of the Girls. The same President who is always excited to inform foreigners about his readiness to negotiate with Boko Haram leaders, never found it apt to speak to Nigerians on his commitment in rescuing the Chibok Girls, this to me is hypocrisy.
On the issue of employment generation, the President was clueless he had no word of assurance for the millions of Nigerian youths who are unemployed; on what this government is doing to provide employment for the army of the unemployed youths. Of course, the President’s speech betrayed hopes and expectations of many Nigerians during this hard time. Nevertheless, there are two great promises that President Buhari made that we must hold on to; we must give him no sleep until he delivers these promises: first is the promise of achieving self-sufficiency in basic food commodities, and the promise the availability of two thousand eight hundred and thirty eight units of houses, uniformly spread across the 36 states and FCT within the next one year.
Written by Ominabo Wealth Dickson.
@Ominabowealth
About the Author
